I am looking to set up a new expedition bank account, rather than running it out of a club account, but to do so the expedition has to 'exist' in the sense of having paperwork. I could set up an undemocratic unincorporated association or even a company limited by guarantee, but what do other expeditions do?

It's handing off when you change expedition leaders/groups that's the tricky bit. I know York did have an expedition account, but don't know whether that's still going.

It depends on your reason for setting up the account, if it's just a way of holding the money till you spend it in the same year, then it's probably not worth having an account.

If your looking at creating a surplus in one year and handing it off to the next year, then that's where it becomes useful. Ie if you want to keep adding money in incase you have to replace fixed ropes, replace a generator, or buy loads of hangers that you don't buy every year. then you'll probably want to set up an account.

If your expedition is in it's first year to a new area, then it's probably not really worth setting up an account, Large outlays and unknown prospects are probably two reasons why you might consider to just get the treasurer to set up an "easy access savings account" with their own bank.

It's very easy to set one of these up, I've opened a few up on my Halifax account, no forms and no signatures. I guess there's just trust if your the exped treasurer, but that goes without saying. Theres only so much "misc metalwork" someone can buy.

If like Gott says it's just for a single trip it may be worth looking into a service like Uaccount, Monzo or Starling.

The onboarding is much easier than a normal high street bank and they all have the ability to create multiple accounts/pots of money so you can segregate funds easily some even give each account its own sort code, account number and PAN so you can pay in and out of that account.

I'd be really interested what the big expeds actually use cos some of them spend £30-60k

When you think of exactly how much of the money actually gets moved through the expedition account, it's probably a tiny fraction. (travel being bought by small groups of people and divvied out and food being bought on expense against members contributions probably using a kitty in foreign currency).